It’s Monday, August 8th, 2016…and here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the week with two examples of the very tangled webs Dims weave when first they practice to…oh, Hells Bells, let’s call a spade a spade: these two cannot help but lie any and every time they open their mendacious mouths!  First, the WSJ‘s Gordon Crovitz relates how, for the umpteenth million time in their prevaricative public lives, another…

Clinton Short-Circuits the Truth

To avoid admitting that she lied, Hillary offers a ‘master class in obfuscation.’

“…Clintonian obfuscation won’t hide the reason she set up her private email server in her basement. She publicly claimed it was for “convenience,” so that she could use a single device for her work and personal emails, but Mr. Comey confirmed she used multiple devices. Mrs. Clinton disclosed the real reason in a 2010 email that came to light later. “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible,” she wrote her State Department advisers. (Why hasn’t been the subject of a Trump campaign commercial in every battleground state across the country?!?) She chose to evade the requirement that her work emails be on State’s servers because that would have made them accessible to the public under disclosure laws.

The result is that her emails are available—just not to Americans.

Contrary to Mrs. Clinton’s claim that “there were no security breaches,” security experts agree China, Russia and unknown others hacked into all 63,000 emails on the home-brew server—including the 33,000 she failed to provide under court order.

The timeline suggests after Russia hacked Mrs. Clinton’s emails, its spies decided to complete their knowledge of Mrs. Clinton’s relationships by hacking the Clinton Foundation, State Department and Democratic National Committee.

Unless a friendly spy agency that hacked Mrs. Clinton’s emails does Americans a favor by publishing them before the election, if she is elected Vladimir Putin will have the capacity to blackmail her at will.

In this election year, voters may not have the option of getting everything they want in a candidate. For all Mr. Trump’s gaffes, at least none directly threaten national security…”

Which makes one, perhaps the only, undeniably enormous point in The Donald’s favor.

But wait…

…there’s MORE: as Rick Moran notes at American Thinker, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton wonders…

Did Clinton emails doom Iranian nuke scientist to death?

“One of the non-classified Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department last year may have convinced the Iranian government that a nuclear scientist who claimed he was kidnapped by the CIA was actually a defector and spy for the U.S.

…While US State Department officials apparently burned Amiri by leaking his status as a defector/spy, Clinton’s emails made it clear he was returning to Iran to spy for the US. Did that fact seal Amiri’s fate?

That the poorly disguised identity of Amiri appeared in a supposedly unclassified email is a major breach of security – especially since the U.S. was arranging his return to Tehran.“

And if Hillary’s lies are bad, as Hope ‘n Change observes, her proposed economic policies are perhaps worse:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the rootin’, tootinest perjurer ever to be to President continues to be shielded by those essentially sworn to protect the people.  For the vast majority of the Fourth Estate, as exemplified below by one of the dimmer stars in the MSM firmament, continue to profess confusion over the significance of The Obamao physically transferring $400M in cash to Iran via overnight delivery:

Charles Krauthammer, however, understands this President’s purpose perfectly:

As contributor Jeff Foutch noted, there’s literally no end to the lengths to which the MSM will go in protecting Barry and Hillary; primarily because in their Progressive minds, the “historic significance” of these two Socialist clowns ascending to office is of greater value than the irreparable harm their policies cause the country, let alone the misery they visit upon its citizens.

Since we’re on the subject of irreparable harm, as Matt Vespa details at Townhall.com, even one of The Boy Blunder’s most ardent defender’s finally has to admit the truth:

Salon: The Iran Deal Is A Disaster–And Obama Is To Blame

“Is this really Salon? The uber-progressive, race-baiting rag that has long been source material for conservatives to get a great laugh over the absurd lengths they go to paint American and the Right as racist, misogynistic, and sexist. Because Carrie Sheffield writes that a) the Iran nuclear deal is a disaster; b) Obama is to blame; and c) the $400 million ransom is proving Republican misgivings to be true:

“It’s time the State Department stop trusting Iran more than the U.S. Congress,” Michael Rubin, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told Salon. “The problem isn’t simply the timing of the ransom payment. Rather, it is the fact that Obama and Kerry are acting like gamblers who believe they can win big with just one more throw of the dice, and are willing to sacrifice increasingly more to do so. There simply is no introspection. The whole premise of the Iran deal was that they could work with Iranian reformers and moderates to defeat Iran’s hardliners at home and abroad. They never understood that Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Rouhani were playing an elaborate game of good cop-bad cop.”

And we all know how well their healthcare plan worked out!

David Ibsen, president of United Against Nuclear Iran, told Salon that the recent detention of Robin Shahini, another U.S. citizen, is further evidence that Washington should be thwarting—not rewarding—Iran’s bad behavior. “The secret airlifting of $400 million in cash to the Iranian regime is just another example of the United States enabling the nefarious activities of the Ayatollah and his proxies,” he said.

Tzvi Kahn, senior policy analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative, also pointed out that what happens in Tehran doesn’t stay in Tehran. The ransom not only incentivizes Iran to take more Americans hostage, but it also effectively declared open season on Americans for every rogue regime and terrorist group around the world…”

But what do the three Doucheketeers care?

They and their loved ones…assuming these self-centered creatures are capable of feeling love for anyone or anything but themselves…are protected 24/7 by armed security unavailable to commoners.

In a related item courtesy of PJ Media, Claudia Rosett relates…

The Mendacity Behind Obama’s Mockery of the Cash-for-Iran Story

“It is not at all clear to me why it is that cash, as opposed to a check or wire transfer, has made this into a news story.” – The Dear Misleader

“Thus did President Obama scold those who are now asking why his administration secretly airlifted $400 million worth of cash to Iran this past January, just as Iran was releasing four American prisoners. By Obama’s account, there’s nothing to see here. Not only did Obama deny, despite the striking coincidence of timing, that the payment was a ransom. He also mocked anyone who might see the story of the cash itself as troubling news, or newsworthy at all. Obama dismissed such reactions as “the manufacturing of outrage in a story that we disclosed in January.”

Welcome, once again, to the vertigo of the Obama “narrative,” in which the priority of his “most transparent” administration is not to deal honestly with the American public, but to spin a web of half truths, enmeshed in complexities, to cover up highly questionable uses of power — and then, if caught red-handed, use the bully pulpit to deride and dismiss the critics.

…Obama’s justification for sending the $400 million installment in cash is that the U.S., due to its strict sanctions on Iran, has no banking relationship with the country — thus the air-freighted pallets of banknotes. Except that doesn’t add up. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey asks: “How come the U.S. did not simply transfer the $400 million we are told actually belonged to Iran to a foreign entity, to be converted into foreign funds for conventional banking transmission to Tehran?”…”

As Mark Tapscott suggested, it’s also likely the way Iran demanded it be paid…, so as to provide further propaganda opportunities with which to abase the Great Satan.  And the man sworn to side with Islam against his own “country”…

…acquiesced!

As we’ve noted time after time over the years, here’s where we come down with B. Hussein:

Next up, in our continuing coverage of the latest ineptocrat who would lead The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight, the WSJ‘s Peggy Noonan recalls…

The Week They Decided Donald Trump Was Crazy

He inflicts one wound after another on his campaign.

“I think this week marked a certain coming to terms with where the election is going. Politics is about trends and tendencies. The trends for Donald Trump are not good, and he tends not to change.

All the damage done to him this week was self-inflicted. The arrows he’s taken are arrows he shot. We have in seven days witnessed his undignified and ungrateful reaction to a Gold Star family; the odd moment with the crying baby; the one-on-one interviews, which are starting to look like something he does in the grip of a compulsion, in which Mr. Trump expresses himself thoughtlessly, carelessly, on such issues as Russia, Ukraine and sexual harassment; the relitigating of his vulgar Megyn Kelly comments from a year ago; and, as his fortunes fell, his statement that he “would not be surprised” if the November election were “rigged.” Subject to an unprecedented assault by a sitting president who called him intellectually and characterologically unfit for the presidency, Mr Trump fired back—at Paul Ryan and John McCain.

Mr. Trump spent all his time doing these things instead of doing his job: making the case for his policies, expanding on his stands, and taking the battle to Hillary Clinton.

…Here is a truth of life. When you act as if you’re insane, people are liable to think you’re insane. That’s what happened this week. People started to become convinced he was nuts, a total flake.

Nuts…insane…a flake; Trump? What was your first hint?!?

…“He’ll reach out, he’ll start to listen. He’ll change, soften.” No, he won’t. Nor will he start to understand that his blunders are a form of shown disrespect for his own supporters. (Nor would he care, ‘cuz they’re losers!) They put themselves on the line for him, many at some cost. What he’s giving them in return is a strange, bush-league, pull-it-out-of-your-ear, always-indulge-your-emotions campaign. They deserve better.

And while Mr. Trump was doing this, Mrs. Clinton was again lying about her emails, reminding us there’s crazy there, too. She insisted to Chris Wallace that FBI director James Comey endorsed her sincerity and veracity. No he didn’t, and everyone knows he didn’t. She’d have spent the past week defending her claims if it weren’t for Mr. Trump’s tireless attempts to kill Mr. Trump.

…I end with a new word, at least new to me. A friend called it to my attention. It speaks of the moment we’re in. It is “kakistocracy,” from the Greek. It means government by the worst persons, by the least qualified or most unprincipled…”

But any way you cut it, despite Trump’s faults…which are indeed as countless as the stars or the sands of the seas…the fact remains…

Unfortunately, at least until this past weekend, as Jim Geraghty reports at NRO, the Trump team appears determined to operate just like any other in a series of unsuccessful…

Sealed Systems

Trump and his fans refuse to accept bad news, making a course change impossible.

“Sean Hannity believes he has found the decisive factor in the 2016 election: “If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz if he won’t endorse — and Jeb Bush and everybody else that made promises they’re not keeping.”

This is a fascinating perspective and one that is common to Trump fans. If their man loses, it cannot possibly reflect any flawed judgment, statement, strategy, or decisions on his part. They have already decided this. They don’t think anything he’s done so far has reduced his chances of victory. He has run as close to a perfect campaign as anyone can possibly ask, and the only thing standing between him and at least 270 locked-up-take-it-to-the-bank electoral votes is insufficient enthusiasm from Ryan, McConnell, Graham, etc.

…But once all of these measuring sticks of a campaign are dismissed as meaningless, we’re left with key questions Trump’s fans — and arguably the candidate himself — stubbornly refuse to answer: What indicators do you trust? How do you know if what you’re doing isn’t working? Considering how quickly Trump shifted in his interest in polls, the philosophy seems to be that “all measurements with good news are true, and all measurements with bad news are false.” Any indicator of improvement is incontrovertible, every indicator of worsening is a damnable lie. That is a textbook definition of denial.

What do Trump fans believe is a good indicator of a campaign’s strength? Pin them down and they’ll answer: the size of the crowds at his rallies. If you’re skeptical of this as an accurate measuring stick, you have good instincts. Big crowds are nice to have, and the big crowds at Trump’s rallies in 2015 were a good early indicator that Republicans were a lot more interested in what he had to say than what, e.g., Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, or George Pataki did.

But each swing states has a voter pool of several million people. Getting 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000 people to a rally doesn’t mean much in that context. In October 2012, Mitt Romney had three rallies with crowds estimated in excess of 12,000 people: in Fishersville, Va., Port St. Lucie, Fla., and Cuyahoga Falls, Oh. He lost all three states.

…The fixation on crowd size reflects the mentality of Trump and his fans; they begin with the conclusion they want — “All is well! We’re winning! Everything we’re doing is working great!” — and work backwards to find the evidence. Trump may not have the most solid record for Christian conservatives, but no one can deny he’s built one hell of a faith-based initiative.“

More unfortunately, as Jeremey Carl observes at NRO, when it comes to taking the bait offered by Hillary and the MSM, Trump is for once truly second to none:

Khizr Khan and the Media’s Donald Duck Hunting

The conversation we aren’t having: Mass immigration from Muslim-majority countries remains an insane policy.

“Allah makes people like Trump to make mistakes to discredit them in public eyes forever.” – Khizr Khan

“…Let us stipulate up front that the Khan incident showed all of the things about Trump that conservatives (and many others) loathe: the thin skin, the vulgarity, the poor judgment, and last, but certainly not least, the unwarranted and cruel criticism of a family that has indeed sacrificed something of great value for America. A better and more in-control man would have simply saluted the Khan family’s sacrifice, expressed regret at their criticism, and explained how he felt his policies would keep America safer than Hillary Clinton’s. Occasionally, Trump made gestures in that direction, but they were inevitably drowned in an ocean of needless bluster and confrontation.

All that having been said, what did the media, in its overwrought coverage of Khan’s father’s speech, the subsequent wall-to-wall interviews of Khan, and its relentless tut-tutting of Trump from various figures, hope to accomplish?

Does anyone outside of a small but loud fringe element actually believe that there are not patriotic Muslim-American citizens? Did they think we aren’t aware that there are Muslim-American soldiers? Even those of us (myself included) who believe that to have increased Muslim immigration after 9/11 was an insane policy, believe that most Muslim-Americans simply want the things that all other Americans want—peace and prosperity for their families and the opportunities that America offers. And most of them, and their children, will make fine American citizens.

But that isn’t really what’s at issue when deciding policy. If there is even a small but meaningful minority of such immigrants that are subject to radicalization, and evidence suggests there is, and a larger minority of Muslim immigrants who, while not supporters of terrorism, hold values – on gender relations, the role of religion in the state, on sharia law, on religious pluralism, or other issues, that are badly out of step with the traditional values of this country, then it is a good idea to be more cautious about granting that group the rights and privileges of American citizenship than we are about immigrants from non-Muslim countries and cultures. We need to consider what unique skills and assets each of these immigrants from these backgrounds will bring to America before we heedlessly and recklessly fling open the door to all of them. That’s just common sense: And common sense on immigration is very dangerous to the Democratic/GOP establishment and media agenda on immigration. Conveniently for them, they can focus on hunting Donald Duck, the GOP’s erratically flying waterfowl, instead.

To pretend that it is not relevant whether we welcome hundreds of thousands of immigrants from a religion in which large numbers of its adherents in survey after survey indicate hostility to the U.S. is not serious policy. To ignore the fact that, for example, 26 percent of those Americans who have attempted to join ISIS, are, in the Newspeak of our Orwellian Mandarins “Minnesota Men,” a reference to Minnesota’s large Somali Muslim immigrant community, is both intellectually incoherent and morally cowardly.

Trump asks whether it serves our interest to continue mass immigration from countries like Somalia, which has, in Minnesota, contributed a great deal to Minneapolis street gangs and ISIS recruiting, but not, by contrast a great deal to our innovation industries (as many other immigrant groups have). Hillary is desperate for us not to talk about this, thus her delight when she could set up her Khizr Khan decoy duck, knowing that, once Trump started chasing it, the media would dutifully follow her decoy wherever it went. Conservatives would spend the week discussing how awful Trump is, rather than how awful, and how dangerous, Clinton’s immigration policies are. No doubt, Clinton herself believes that even asking such questions is illegitimate and hateful — one more reason why she is dangerously unqualified to be president…”

Not to mention one more reason why the current occupant of the Oval Office is manifestly unqualified for the position.  But in the end, only The Donald…and his irrepressible tendencies…makes such a strategy workable.  Were any other Republican candidate in his place, this election would already be over…and the Clan Clinton rightfully consigned to the dust bin of history.

Which brings us to The Lighter Side…

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with Tales From the Darkside, and this bit of overreaction from Worcester County, MD NAACP president Ivory Smith:

NAACP Upset Over ‘White Lives Matter,’ ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Shirts Sold For Marlin Awareness

“An Ocean City marina is selling T-shirts featuring the phrases “White Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” to spread awareness about the conservation of marlins. The White Marlin Marina is selling two types of the shirts — one in honor of white marlins and another in honor of blue marlins.

Worcester County NAACP president Ivory Smith tells The Daily Times of Salisbury that the shirts could be interpreted as a mockery of the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements. Those two phrases have been rallying cries following police shootings of African-Americans and shootings of police officers, respectively.

The ebony Ivory

The designer of the shirts, employee George Lamplugh, says his shirts promote billfish conservation by featuring images of marlins on safe-release circle hooks, unlike Swagger Fishing, which sells “Kill Whitey” shirts and stickers promoting non-release white marlin fishing.

He says he has no intention of spurring controversy with the shirts, and that a portion of the sales are going toward billfish conservation efforts…”

Wethinks the ebony Ivory needs to get a life…and/or focus on, with all the Black-on-Black crime in the supposed “Land of Gentle Living”, something other than the status of a game fish!

Magoo